On his debut solo album Ends, Giancarlo Erra ably demonstrates a masterful gift for producing timelessly intimate and profoundly affecting music.
Comprising a suite of eight thematically linked instrumentals, Ends deploys sparse piano patterns, synth textures, eerily beautiful string quartet performances, and subtle electronic pulses to create a compelling whole that establishes Erra as a composer of rare sensitivity and singular purpose.
Recalling the tonal contemporary classical miniatures of Arvo Pärt and Max Richter, the soundtracks of Nils Frahm and Clint Mansell, and the early Electronica of the likes of Roedelius and Schulze, Ends presents a connected series of suspended sonic reveries that shift and build in unexpected and frequently heart-breaking ways.
Produced and performed by Erra – along with a Danish / Icelandic quartet comprising Elis Marteinsson (violin), Krista Sverrisdóttir (violin), Nicolaj Nielsen (viola) and Quynh Lephan (cello) – some of the album’s vividly cinematic soundscapes will be used in a forthcoming documentary by Australian film-maker Dion Johnson.
Freed from the constraints of writing songs and creating frameworks for his long-running post-rock collective Nosound, with Ends Erra has delivered the purest distillation of his musical vision. In abandoning his voice, Giancarlo Erra has discovered a new one.
Cover and photography by Caroline Traitler. All instruments by Giancarlo Erra. Strings by Elis Marteinsson.
“I decided to call the album ‘Ends’, because each end is in actuality the possible start for something new (in both music and life). This isn’t always easy to accept, and it’s something I often struggle with. The album title is a reminder and an encouragement, plus it’s an appropriate name for my solo debut which explores a different kind of music for me.
Ironically, the reason I choose to release this solo work is that Nosound’s music has increasingly revolved around my voice. I’ve become too central to the band’s sound and in a weird way that’s become restricting as I’ve been self-consciously writing with Nosound in mind. The time came that I needed to free myself from my own chains in regards to what Nosound should do or be.
I now want to freely express all sides of my musical tastes and personality without forcing anything into anything else.“
TRACKS
1. End III
2. End II
3. End I
4. End VII
5. End V
6. End IV
7. End VI
8. Ends Coda